Jibril was bored, and that was saying something. Her patience was
almost legendary, as was her force of will. Now however she found
herself intrigued. The golden-haired angel had heard of the
so called 'Bet' that had been going on some time ago, but had brushed
it off as something not to be bothered with. Soon, however, a vague
interest had arisen and she found herself heading towards the now
more-or-less unfamiliar and currently unoccupied Mimir's Well. Generally,
there were one or more beings present there, even if it was just
for the time of channel surfing the place offered.

But it was Belldandy's birthday, so people tended to be otherwise
occupied. She had been voted "most popular divinity"
for more than ten hundred years running.

The surface of the pool rippled, showing what she knew the others
would refer to as a Crossover timeline. It looked interesting enough,
and she was familiar with most of the story. She decided to turn
it around when it got too gloomy.

Frankly, Jibril was a bit of a free spirit herself, and didn't
really believe in destiny. So it came as no great surprise what
she did.

Well, not to those who knew her, at least.

a Ranma ½ short story
by Griever
inspired by 'The Bet'
a story concept by Gregg Sharp

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ was created by Takahashi Rumiko, and
is licensed to Shogakukan Inc., Kitty, Fuji TV, and Viz Communications
Inc. I am not an anime scriptwriter, nor do I play one on TV. Hence,
only the general idea of this fic is mine, not the characters or
their backgrounds, nor the worlds depicted. And just for the record,
I'm about as broke as they come (college — go fig').

Foreword: A short spamfic fic, no more. Just something to put up
a concept. I'm not about to write a Ranma altaverse in this direction,
so I thought putting the idea up would be good, because it's a shame
to waste sometime with this sort of potential. It's short, and no
more than a setting really, but here it is.

Nowhere, Nowhen
Or Everwhere and Everywhen,
It Hasn't Been Decided Yet

In a timestream, every possibility is of equal importance. The
most minute alterations, the smallest amount of chaos, can turn
any prediction — no matter how well divined — to nothing
but futile speculation.

The chaos factor is an unknown, she knew, and that was why when
she detected a hint of it, she immediately went about removing it,
waiting patiently for a chance. And as always, the chance had come,
and she'd seized it. It had been easy to use her grasp of the timestream
to manipulate a rift in the continuum — too easy, but that
was the nature of her art.

Still, the disturbance had been dealt with, and time was once again
a little more regulated a thing.

Just another day in the job of Setsuna Meiou.

Genma was a panda.

That wasn't his problem.

He was an idiot.

That was a problem, but not the one plaguing him at the
moment. Rather, it was the partial cause of said problem.

His problem was that he had been sparring with his son, and after
being changed by a dunk in one of the training ground's many pools,
he had managed to knock his son into one. And Ranma had failed to
surface.

What was he going to do? This was terrible! It meant that he'd
have to *shudder* face responsibility and a katana.

Truly, the path of a martial artist was plagued with peril.

Timeline C-99X-Dsc
Local Timestream

It was a magnificent building, a building shrouded in legend and
mystery. A massive-yet-sleek tower that loomed over what seemed
to be nothingness shrouded in mist, built of white marble and gleaming
silver, adorned with glyphs and mystical symbols.

It was the Eighth Tower of Chronopia.

Existing outside space-time, it was home of the greatest Firstborn
school of magic, the Collegium Temporum. Only the finest knights
and scholars were allowed in, to train in the art of reading and
manipulating time itself.

And for the first time in its history, an unwanted guest had come
knocking.

Ranma Timeline,
Two Years Later

The very air shuddered and split, allowing him passage as his form
materialized from seemingly nowhere. Tall and well-built, clad in
his personalized suit of well-fitting black plate armour and covered
in golden robes, he gave the impression of someone not to be messed
with. His hands held a staff tipped by a crescent adorned with spikes,
and the flag of his liege lord hung proudly from his back. He'd
been one of the few, the chosen, who had managed to become the wisemen-warriors
of the Firstborn, a Chronomancer.

And now he was home, in the world from which he had somehow been
banished a decade ago. Or what felt like a decade, in the previous
timeline. Here, it appeared to have been less by a fairly large
margin.

He frowned, feeling the subtle manipulations that would have escaped
one without his sort of training. A sort of background noise, as
if a river were being directed where it wanted not to go a
time manipulation the likes of which would not have been dared on
the world he'd just come from. Even though he'd been given leave
by his liege, and even though there was no reason for him to, the
Chronomancer known as Ranma Saotome exerted his power over time
and sidestepped into the space that was known to only the most elite:
the place between seconds, a mist-shrouded plane on which, in his
world, the Chronomancer Tower stood guard over the passage of time.

But it was barren here; he felt no life, no breath passing within
the place's confines. Odd, that. And the trace of magic, the disturbance
was still there, and yet not He found that he couldn't track
it from where he was. Still, the chronomancer doing this had to
eat sometime, and this place was a lonely one as well. If there
was one thing a time mage knew, it was patience, and Ranma was good
at what he did. He'd find the troublemaker in the real world. The
traces of temporal magic would lead him to that person. He felt
no others using their kind of spells on this Plane — not at
that instant anyway — so it was a safe guess that he'd easily
locate the person he was looking for.

He stepped aside again, into the realm most called Reality. His
brief stint had, apparently, brought him further along than imagined.
He didn't really recognize the city in the distance, but it seemed
so much larger than even the greatest towns and even Chronopia itself.

And it was like the ones of his youth. A tiny bit of glee woke
within his soul, and he smiled.

A few hundred miles away, in two different wards of Tokyo, two
different people suddenly shuddered. One was admonished about shedding
on the furniture, and disgruntledly accepted a kettle of hot water
from one of his friend's daughters.

The other's grip on her metallic staff tightened as she felt something
return something she hadn't felt in years, and now
the sheer potential it radiated was enough to make her shudder again.

And rightly.

Author's notes: As far as I know, there isn't another Ranma/Chronopia
crossover out there at this time. If anyone wishes to continue this
idea, expand on it, or just plain steal some concepts to integrate
into their own works, they're welcome to it. Just drop me a line
at the usual: griever@wp.pl address. Right now, I'm going back to
writing Roadtrip. I had hoped to be done with it already, but alas,
no such luck.